WTI prices fall; crude inventories down

Prices for West Texas Intermediate crude were a bit lower in New York trade Wednesday after the US Energy Information Administration released its weekly inventories data, which showed that crude oil stockpiles fell less than expected last week while gasoline and distillates inventories both increased despite a drop of 2.1 percent in refinery utilization during the week.

The EIA reported that crude oil inventories fell 1.8 million barrels last week, less than expected, to 342.7 million barrels, while gasoline stockpiles added 800,000 barrels to 215.4 million barrels and distillates in storage were up by 1.2 million barrels to 160.5 million barrels.

WTI September contracts dropped 21 cents to $65.40 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and went as low as $63.76 per barrel earlier, but Brent crude added 32 cents to $67.19 per barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.

Despite gains in gasoline and distillates stockpiles and declines in demand, Nymex August gasoline futures added 3 cents to $1.84 per gallon while September heating oil futures wee up a cent to $1.74 per gallon.

Demand for distillates fell 11 percent in the past four weeks from last year’s levels.

The retail prices of gasoline rose less than a cent overnight to $2.461 per gallon on average nationally, it’s first rise in a month as gasoline remained 23 cents cheaper than it was a month ago.